SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
The Screenplay examined
I recently re-read Simon Beaufoy's script for The Full Monty and even if the film itself was perhaps a bit overembraced -- though I enjoyed it -- the screenplay still reads as a solid piece of work. A similar, if even more marked, torrent of love has greeted Slumdog Millionaire, from Beaufoy's now Oscar-winning script (adapted from the book by Vikas Swarup, which I have not read), but unlike The Full Monty I haven't been convinced the worldwide group hug is all that deserved. While I would love to see the film itself again, to see whether my reservations remain, intensify or suddenly seem unfair, what I most wanted to do was read the script. Fortunately, it's readily available online.
Is the issue I had just that there are a string of coincidences that are critical to the film's plotting? Clearly, the film is meant to be seen as a fable and thus the contrivances in the script forgiven, but does that not make the realism of its portrayal of Mumbai poverty harder to appreciate?
The thing that is odd about the film and script is indeed that it is intended to be a fable, not just the contrived -- or magical, depending on your point of view -- nature of the plot points and connections but in some of the characterizations and dialogue as well.
To be fair, one way of looking at the fact that the questions are all directly related to some key event in Jamal's life is to think of how there would of course be many other incidents, moments, events, that were also important to the character which are not touched on by questions or shown in the film. Even if it comes off as -- everything that happened to Jamal is now a question on the game show, which contributes to the contrived feel. So one's acceptance basically comes down to: do you see it as a fable, and do you picture all the other things in Jamal's life that make this set-up feel less contrived.
Separate from that however, and even if one is able to suspend disbelief, my other disappointment with the screenplay is the often simple-minded dialogue
Game show host Prem is an amusing character, his dialogue during their game show exchanges is well-done. But he's also a bit cartoonish, his constant needling of Jamal an embellishment of how the real game show host behaves (as scriptwriter Beaufoy has admitted) but it's probably a necessary function to add more tension to the scenes. And as is establish a bit later in the story part of Prem does not want Jamal to succeed because he doesn't want someone taking attention away from his own slums-to-riches life story. There's also a scene in the script that was cut from the film, in which Prem's angry wife confronts him during a show break and he tries to charm her back on to his good graces.
What the script -- and the film -- do undeniably well is open up this world, to Western eyes unfamiliar with the feel of modern India, both the wealthier aspects and the fully impoverished,
The scenes set in the past, with Jamal and his brother Salim as little boys are the most successful in the script, in my opinion, the most memorable sequences. The early scene with Jamal in the toilet -- vividly recreated in the film with the series of pay outhouses that empty out into a lake of sewage and trash (environmentally disgusting but certainly memorable) -- on page 13 of the script is terrific. Jamal then rushes off at the approach of movie start Amitabh, while covered in sludgy filth.
JAMAL O.S.
It’s a shy one. Since when was
there a time limit on a crap?
SALIM
Since there was a customer
waiting, that’s when.
He flashes another placatory smile at Prakash.
JAMAL O.S.
(singing/ grunting)
Come on out, you beauty, unveil
yourself, my darling-warling....
Of course each of these wonderful flashback set pieces come back to the present with the game show corruption plot -- Did Jamal cheat or didn't he? -- and this is also where the momentum tends to flag for me. It may sound ludicrous to some given what the main plot spine of the film is but I would've actually been more interested in a coming of age story about these two boys growing up and growing apart in Mumbai, without any of the game show storyline. Of course that would've been an entirely different movie and not made a billion dollars. And I can hear someone saying, if you want that sort of thing go re-watch Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy. But I'm not expecting Ray redux, just trying to focus on what I think is the script's strength and what most held my attention
Then there's the romantic plot -- there's nothing against the inevitability of it. One hopes that Jamal and Latika will finally end up together, anything less in a story like this would be unsatisfying. But the build-up to that resolution doesn't have the power it could (or that it apparently had for a lot of other people,
One flawed scene in the script (and film) as part of that romance: when Jamal poses as a dishwasher to get a chance to see Latika, as she is basically held as a captive lover by the crime boss. It's great to have them reunited after all the time apart but the set-up for this scene seems even more contrived than the Millionaire questions.
When they reconnect in secret in the kitchen, of course Millionaire is on the TV in the background (as it often is during the film). But their touching reconnection suffers from bland, expository dialogue.
JAMAL
Why does everyone love this
programme?
LATIKA
It’s the chance to escape, isn’t
it? Walk into another life.
Doesn’t everyone want that?
JAMAL
You have another life. A rich
one.
LATIKA
Who’d have thought it possible?
A slum dog, with all this.
Making Javed, her "benefactor", an evil prick is probably a necessary contrivance, to give her more impetus to want to escape and restart her life with Jamal, but he's not a particularly interesting prick.
It's hard to argue against the script's pace; while Danny Boyle is clearly responsible for the film's frenetic action, a Boyle trademark, the script itself moves at a fast clip, as well.
I'd be disingenuous if I just blithely ripped the film or the script; while I still consider it overrated, there remains plenty to admire as well. The final film is a feast for the eyes, with many vibrant scenes and memorable set pieces (and a superb soundtrack). Ultimately, what I think the script lacks is that next level of depth under the characters, in the characterizations and dialogue, that raises it above the simplistic. It is indeed a fable, but as a fable with real-world backdrop and dangers I'd hoped for more in three-dimensions. (Glasses not included.)
